About Me

I'm a semi-retired professional man, living in the Midwestern United States. This blog is a personal blog and is not directly connected with my professional practice (although I may draw upon my professional experiences, as well as my personal experiences, in writing my blog posts). This is a place for personal, not professional, opinions.

That's what one man did on Monday night, according to Colorado Springs police. Lucas Hinch, 37, was cited for discharging a weapon within city limits after he took the fight with his computer outside and got the revenge most of us only dream about.

"He got tired of fighting with his computer for the last several months," Lt. Jeff Strossner said. "He was having technology problems, so he took it out in the back alley and shot it."

The Dell kept giving Hinch the "blue screen of death," he said of the machine's final moments.

"It was extremely frustrating," he said. "I reached critical mass."

As was the case with most people who reach "critical mass," a meltdown quickly followed.

"It was premeditated, oh, definitely," he said. "I made sure there wasn't anything behind it and nothing to ricochet."

Hinch was issued a summons for discharging a firearm within city limits, which Hinch called a small price to pay for justice.

“That computer had a bad day," he said.

You learned that machine, boy! You learned it real good!

A couple of years ago, I had an HP laptop that kept giving me the blue screen of death. Instead of shooting it, I engaged in a series of epithet-laden soliloquies via telephone with a customer support person who insisted on calling himself "Dave" but who I insisted on calling "Mujibar," since I understood only 15% to 20% of his sort-of-recognizable-as-English-but-not-quite responses. HP took back the infernal machine and performed some kind of Santeria rituals on it. It came back devoid of blue screens, but I never got back that lovin' feeling for it and within a year retired it and replaced it with, ironically, a Dell desktop, the same brand that Hinch assassinated.

I should have performed a one-and-a-half Hinch on it, from the high board, instead.

The cops confiscated Hinch's 9 mm automatic pistol. If he ever gets its back, I'll invite him down to the Lone Star State and we can set the HP up at a local gun range, give it a last cigarette and a blindfold, and shoot the living sugar out of it. Come to think of it, he doesn't need to bring his nine. I've got plenty of long-and-short barreled options in my own private arsenal to blow it to hell. Most of them are even legal.